Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,A sun that is the source of all our power.The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,Are moving at a million miles a day,In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,Of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our Galaxy itself contains 100 billion starsIt's 100,000 light years side to side,It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thickBut out by us it's just 3,000 light years wideWe're 30,000 light years from galactic central point,We go round every 200 million yearsAnd our Galaxy is only one of millions of billionsIn this amazing and expanding Universe.

The Universe itself keeps on expanding and expandingIn all of the directions it can whizAs fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,12 million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.So remember when you're feeling very small and insecureHow amazingly unlikely is your birthAnd pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in spaceBecause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Yeah, it's obvious -- I mean, Springsteen had it right when he said "Everything dies, baby, that's a fact," but when I was a kid, I thought Pioneer was wicked cool -- that, and the space shuttle program. I always wondered what the reaction would be here on Earth if someone -- or something -- heard the signals and decided to send one back. Actually, I still wonder about that. It doesn't keep me up nights or anything like that, but . . . every now and again, when I see a story like this, I remember how I felt hearing stories about space exploration as a child, and it makes me smile.

seriously though, i think it's a bit sad that people don't seem to care so much about this kind of thing... people just seem to be apathetic to the exploration of space, which baffles me completely... Personally, it's where our future as a race lies... obviously, once we've sorted the mess we've got down here out first...

yeah, i felt robbed when i found out that we weren't gonna be living on the moon and stuff in my lifetime. I guess thats what watching sci-fi as a kid does to you... it's mad that people in the 60's honestly thought that by 2000 we'd all be dressed in tin foil and eating pills instead of food whilst flying to one of jupiters moons for a day out...

Hail the mighty Pioneer 10, may its memory live in human history for aeons to come. To have shown the path for the rest of us to follow, I raise my red wine and say a silent prayer for the little silent machine.

The article didn't mention the Oort cloud, a giant shell surrounding the solar system made up of the basic materials and giving birth to comets and such. The cloud represents the point at which the Sun's gravitational influence is too small to have any effect, P10 must be well within it by now.

Damn!!! it's been AGES since i saw that!!! heh heh... actually i've been trying to remember the name of a really good Sci-fi film with sean connery in it as a sherif on a space station where miners are being illegal drugs which is turning them into crzed murderers...

of course one of the greatest Sci-fis of all time has to be 'they live'....

Look back on life in the 60's, when they thought we'd be taking day shuttles to Mars. Look at US life, social values, morality, technology, etc. See how different it was from that which we have today, and it's only been 40 years. Big jump, eh?

Now think back 140 years....life in the 1860's in the US. In civil war with our own families, social values hugely different, people were split on the morality of slavery, our highest technology were probably Springfields or some other projectile weapon...maybe a submarine. See how much more of a jump we are from that today? Life is completely different. Different expectations, jobs, even life expectancies. Hell, most citizens weren't even paying a federal income tax; only the rich, if that. Huge jump.

Don't even dare to look back to pre-US days in North America, or pre-Columbus days in Europe. You'll find religions, laws, consumer needs, currencies, etc. that have passed away with the empires that died long ago. Remember the times in history before the invention of the gear? People from those ages wouldn't even recognize our current society as one, much less be able to adapt & function in it....probably ever.

Now, imagine how it's going to be 1000 years from now. None of us have a clue, nor could make an educated guess that would even be close. Probably less than 5% of the world factors that brought us to where we are today could've been predicted 1000 years ago. Globalization, military superpowers, nuclear energy, radio & television, microwave technology, space exploration, quasars, & quarks. These things could have never even been imagined by the most educated institutions in the world 1000 years ago.

Again, try to imagine what it'll be like 1000 years from now. I'd like to hear the guesses, serious & otherwise. But serious guesses are usually more fun

"OUTLAND is a movie written and directed by Peter Hyams in 1981. Nomination for the Academy Awards in the Best Sound category. Io. Sean Connery is the new sheriff on this planet. He represents the law for the 2000 people working in the mines and extracting Titane. When he tries to understand why there are regularly strange suicides amidst the workers, he's soon asked to close his eyes and accept a bribe. Connery discovers that a synthetic drug is the cause of the numerous psychotic behaviours appearing more and more int the station. A classic. Adult science-fiction for once."

most of our contries as we know them won't exist... that's assuming we have any society left and not blown up our planet or screwed ourselves in some other way due to global warming / asteroid collision, etc.

I think human nature probably won't change though... we'll still be as petty and partisan as we are now and were 4000 years ago...

I've Been To Machu Pichu Back In 1991...And I Could'nt Even Try To Explain How That Experience Was,My Words Could Not Do It Justice.By The Time I Got To The Summit,The Sun Was Rising And It Was Beautiful.